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12 Principles of Animation - Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose #Tutorials





It's no secret that the 12 Principles of Animation are the fundamental building blocks for any animator. Get the hang of these basic techniques and you'll be on your way to understanding the language of animation.

First introduced in The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, these 12 principles have remained the quintessential roadmap for aspiring and experienced animators alike. Our animators are no exception! In fact, they have created their very own series of animation tutorials to explain the 12 Principles of Animation, using what you ask? Why, a brown bag, of course!

Last month we demonstrated the Staging principle, so now with no further adieu, let's continue our series with the fourth principle: Straight Ahead Action and Pose To Pose

Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose refer to the two drawing processes applied by animators. Straight Ahead Action is the drawing out of a scene frame by frame from start to finish, whereas in Pose to Pose the action is planned out by the animator using a few key frames and then the intervals are filled in.

In our example animation above, we apply both Pose to Pose and Straight Ahead Action to the brown bag as it jumps up on the screen. We've marked out 3 key frames in the Pose to Pose and get quite a dramatic transition, compared to the slightly more fluid Straight Ahead Action as you can see from the images below:

Pose to Pose

Pose to Pose

Straight Ahead Action

Hope you've enjoyed our interpretation of the fourth principle, tune in next month for principle number 5: Follow Through and Overlapping Action and in case you missed it check out our version of the third principle here: Staging!


Anahita Tabarsi

Anahita is Brown Bag Films' Marketing Director, Digital & Social and drinks more than five coffees a day...

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